[jamal-kumar]

There's an author, Robert Anton Wilson, who started writing an influential novel called the Illuminatus trilogy which is a pretty fun read but basically if the whole point of his work was anything it would be that if you aren't doing something of your own kind of conspiracy and you're instead obsessing over real or imagined conspiracies that other people are doing, you're wasting your time. It's a fun thing to tell someone who's ranting at you about something you've probably just heard before and already checked out as inanity if anything. The other fun thing to do is see if they accept that the moon is a hologram (You'd be surprised how many people agree to this notion)

He has a quote about belief as a whole:

"My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence. The more certitude one assumes, the less there is left to think about, and a person sure of everything would never have any need to think about anything and might be considered clinically dead under current medical standards, where absence of brain activity is taken to mean that life has ended."

[silicon2401]

> if you aren't doing something of your own kind of conspiracy and you're instead obsessing over real or imagined conspiracies that other people are doing, you're wasting your time

That's an incredibly practical insight IMO. It's true: the more you focus on achieving your own goals, the less you care about what else is going on in the world; the most that you care about is overcoming obstacles, but that's the case regardless of whether they're caused by other people's conspiracy plots or random accidents (at least that's the case for me).

[jstarfish]

There's an even more practical aspect to it-- conspiracies involve multiple parties. In trying to take one down, you have neither sovereignty nor numbers on your side. You have n opponents you have to indict through legal means, but they only have one...and have already proven they are willing to use illegal/unethical tactics to achieve their goals.

So even if you're absolutely right about whatever you think is going on, it's a losing proposition to take on someone else's conspiracy as a pet crusade.

[drewcoo]

For best effect, read the entire trilogy without sleeping, using whatever chemicals necessary to make that happen. And then start to see fnord the signs of conspiracy from the book everywhere in real life.

RAW made conspiracy into art.

I loved it but I also know (and have known) some folks pretty deep into provably untrue conspiracy thinking. Honestly, it seemed to be a way to self-medicate with conspiracies for them. I don't think that my Illuminatus experience compares with what they're thinking in any but the most trivial way.

[tompston]

RAW is great!

Haven't read Illuminatus trilogy, but the first chapters of Prometheus Rising had an interesting framework for how you can view the world. Definitely recommend!